


Probably Illogical

by Jayphrax



Category: Tangled: The Series (Cartoon)
Genre: Almost Drowning, F/M, Modern AU, mermaid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-24 00:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15618789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jayphrax/pseuds/Jayphrax
Summary: Varian has been suspended from school for 2 weeks, pending his court trial. He's got what he thinks is 14 days of freedom left. 14 days to figure out whether or not there's a literal mermaid living near his home.





	Probably Illogical

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea, it was random, it was niche and I am not a writer but I decided to try my hand at it anyway! It's the first thing I've ever written but here we go XD

Old Corona beach was a supposedly a paradise in the summer, but on this particular Monday evening in April it was Varian’s own personal Hell on Earth. Today marked day one of his two week suspension from Corona High and he had spent almost the entire day by his father’s hospital bedside being chewed out. He’d eventually been forced to leave, going back to a dark, empty house only to find a letter informing him of his upcoming court date and had to resist the urge to tear the thing to shreds. So he had escaped to the beach, where hopefully he wouldn’t have to be reminded of the whole horrifying incident. Now he was walking down the shore, music blaring in his headphones, trying to focus on the lyrics telling him a story about some mad scientist... Huh... poignant... 

“No!” Varian rubbed his eyes. He’d come out here specifically to not think about the weekend that had left his future in shambles and was probably going to get him sent to juvie. The worst thing was? He was so close to not caring. He knew why he had been suspended instead of expelled, why the courts weren’t going to decide what to do with him for another two weeks. They were going easy on him, cause supposedly he was a “troubled, traumatized kid.” At least that’s the angle he’d heard the defense lawyer was going to be going with to try and get him off with community service instead of jail time. They just needed him to admit it, preferably with a formal, written apology.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that was going to happen.

Because despite everything, Varian still felt justified. Had it gotten out of hand? Undoubtedly. Could he say he was sorry about it? Not really. The one thing that really stung was that his dreams of getting into MIT someday had been completely crushed. The suspension had seen to that. But what was done was done. All he could do for now was to stick to his guns and try to enjoy his last two weeks of freedom before the courts threw him in a juvenile detention center.

He kicked the sand in frustration, angry with himself for thinking about it. He forced himself to focus on the sound of the music and the way the waves washed over the shore, darkening the sand. Before he long he had reached what most people assumed was the end of the beach, but Varian knew better than that. He had lived in this village his whole life, knew all of it’s secrets. There was the tiniest cove with its own lagoon just on the other side of the ridge, surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs and sand dunes, complete with an old pier that was perfect for diving off of. Easy to miss if you hadn’t explored every inch of the coastline the way he had. He hiked up the ridge and began the climb down. It would’ve been dangerous in flip-flops, but Varian had done it a hundred times or more and it didn't bother him. Of course, there was always the quicker short-cut through the caves, but there was something rewarding about making the climb. He jumped the last few feet onto the clean white sand and surveyed his little hiding spot.

Varian stopped at the steps leading up to the rickety old pier. During better days he used to run headlong down it to jump into the lagoon. He hadn’t planned on it, but the pull to do it one more time just to pretend everything wasn’t falling to pieces was almost unbearable.

“What the hell…” he mumbled to himself, pulling his headphones down around his neck while kicking his flip-flops off. He paused the still blaring music before unceremoniously dropping his phone and earphones onto the sand next to his shoes. The first step was missing, washed away by the tides ages long ago, so Varian had to yank himself up onto the second with help from the crooked banister. “ _I’m so sure that’s going to snap off in my hand one day._ ” he thought bitterly. Even though he had to admit the image of himself tumbling back onto the sand was comical. Cass probably would’ve-

“No, no, nope, not thinking about her, not thinking about _ANY_ of them.” Varian interrupted his own thoughts, wincing. A soft breeze ruffled his hair, distracting him as he looked out over the ocean. The reflection of the setting sun on the water burned his eyes, but the pain wasn’t bad enough to force him to look away. Not yet. There was something cathartic about watching the sun set on this day from hell. But as Varian watched it sink below the horizon, he realized that tomorrow wasn’t going to be any better, and he felt his heart sink with the sun. His future was still in shambles, the incident had still happened, and everyone still hated him. A sunset wasn’t going to change that.

Varian finally tore his eyes away from the water, taking a shaky breath, trying to breathe all of the hurt out of his system. It, unsurprisingly, didn’t work. He curled his toes against the dark wood of the pier and then, like he used to as a kid, took off sprinting. As he reached the end of the pier, he pushed off hard. Suspended just above the smooth surface of the water, time slowed down and for a blissful moment he felt like he’d left all the horrible events from the past few days, his fear and his anger, back on the beach next to his flip-flops and headphones.

Then he plunged into the water, still clad in his shirt and shorts. As Varian sank beneath the surface, he glanced up, watching the glowing orange sky get farther and farther away. Like _he_ was getting father away from it all. And… and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing… In the water his own thoughts were muffled. Only echoes of “troubled kid”, “disgrace” and his personal favorite: “sociopath” pounded against the inside of his skull. God, all he wanted was for those voices to shut up! He closed his eyes and breathed out to prevent himself from rising back up to the surface. He just… he wasn’t ready… He wasn’t sure he ever would be again. Varian’s body was starting to run out of air, but he couldn’t bring himself to kick back up to the surface. His ears filled with the pressure of the water, drowning out the horrible voices, it was nice… the cold, the silence, the feeling of the bubbles under his fingers, and the slippery feeling of a- what the HELL???

Varian’s eyes snapped open. He had just felt a slippery, scaly _something_ around his legs. His first thought had been “ _Shark!_ ” Even though there hadn’t been a shark attack in the area since he was 9, he had also been dumb enough to jump in the water at dusk. No matter how bad things were out of the water, he definitely hadn’t signed up to be eaten. But when his eyes opened and tried to adjust through the waning light and the water, it wasn’t a shark he was looking at. It wasn’t even a fish. Floating above him in the golden sea was a girl. His vision was blurred, but it was an unmistakably human face smiling down at him. A bubbly gurgle sort of sound filled his ears and it took him a second to realize it had come from the girl. It was… a giggle? He opened his mouth to say something, anything, even if he didn’t know what, but there wasn’t any air in his lungs. He simply gaped like a fish and the girl made that bubbling sound again and then, with a flick of the long blue tail that had grazed him, she spiraled around him and dove down into the darkness below. Varian blinked. He’d just seen a mermaid. An actual, bona-fide mermaid. He wasn’t thinking about anything anymore, his mind racing overtime with the impossibility of what had just happened to him, the gears in his brain already turning, searching for a logical explanation when there absolutely was none. Other than that he was hallucinating, or he had died and apparently the afterlife was full of lunacy like this. He didn’t feel dead, his lungs burned too much for that.

It suddenly occurred to him that if he didn’t take a breath right now, he was going to drown, and he was struck with the overwhelming will to live. He didn’t want to die. Varian kicked hard, desperately reaching for the surface of the water, but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. He kicked hard again, now scared for his life when he realized that he wasn’t going to make it. He had to breathe _now_ , or he was going to pass out. That was when his body betrayed him, it tried to gasp for air, but he was still several feet underwater. The seawater burned his nose and his throat as he started coughing violently. “ _I’m going to drown… I’m actually going to drown…_ ”

He felt the dark below him rise, clouding his vision. Varian squinted up at the last shreds of orange in the sky, still so impossibly far away. “ _This is so stupid…_ ” was the last thought to cross his mind before everything went black.


End file.
